EARLY
WINTERS---ANOTHER
OF THE SEATTLE AREA PIONEERS (page one of three)

ALERT: There are now five History
of Gear books published. They cover three of the earliest gear
pioneers, GERRY MOUNTAIN SPORTS, HOLUBAR MOUNTAINEERING, WARMLITE
EQUIPMENT, AND FROSTLINE KITS, plus a somewhat later one, Mountain
Safety Research (MSR) of Seattle... If interested, the books can
all be ordered direct from my publisher. Click here to learn more.

BILL NICOLAI is the man behind the classic Early Winters company,
which began in 1972 (William S. Nicolai), and ended its classic
phase in the early 1980s when it dropped its classic products,
eg. its wonderful tents and mountain parkas. This company has
something of a "fan following," several have claimed,
including David Jensen, formerly in Customer Service for
the company, that EW produced the first commercially available
Goretex piece of outdoor gear, a Mountain Parka in 1976. (link
to inventors of Goretex )....Mr.
Jensen also states that the company's second Goretex product followed
about six months later. That was a tent, the Light Dimension,
also in 1976..Thus, it seems very plausible to claim that Early
Winters ought to have two honors in the History of Gear-- FIRST
GORETEX GARMENT, and FIRST GORETEX TENT.....ABOVE: This 1978 picture
shows the original EW store, which one of my correspondents remembers
as "incredibly fun and charming." It was in the old
Alpine Guild store on Queen Anne Hill near Seattle Center. The
street sign says "Queen Anne Ave. N.," the street number
was 300, and the town of course is Seattle, Washington. The storefront
picture is compliments of a correspondent, who also reports that
at the time of the Queen Ave. store Mr. Nicolai had a man named
Bill Edwards as his partner.. The third original partner,
Mr. Ron Zimmerman, contacted me also.

Wikipedia has an excellent
page about EW. In part, that page states that sales at EW reached
nearly $20 million at its high point in the early 1980s. Then
the company was sold by Nicolai to Orvis (of fly fishing gear
fame) in 1984 and Nicolai moved on to other things in the realm
of sales and marketing. The Wikipedia material goes on to state
that at an unknown later date the company was purchased by the
Norm Thompson group in Portland, Oregon, and that in 2004 Norm
Thompson renamed the company "Sahalie" (and those are
the rather uninspiring clothing and knick-nack catalogs that I
have been getting in the mail in recent years). Further notes:
Norm Thompson is personally well-known to me because I shopped
in their original Portland store on Thurman St. many years ago,
when they really were "Norm Thompson, Outfitter,"
and had a very interesting, classy store definitely catering to
the likes of folks going on safaris! BF

Please Note:All Material on this page, and in all
my "History of Gear" webpages, is copyrighted, and no
usage of my material is permitted unless explicit permission is
granted by me, Bruce B. Johnson, owner of OregonPhotos.com......
Editors: Please contact
me if
you have interest in publishing....Others: if you were involved with one of the
old-line, vintage gear companies and have a story to tell in these
pages, please contact
me soon.uill Nickolai is a spelling also
seen.

TENTS:

There are those who remember EW's earliest
tents with great admiration and fondness. The first to be introduced
was in 1972, a radically-styled, expedition-capable tent named
the "Omnipotent." In the picture at page top,
one can glimpse an Omnipotent on the right side of the display
window. Later, in 1976, came the Goretex "Light Dimension."
Sadly, sometime in the early 1980s, the Company dropped all its
fine tents and mountain parkas from its catalogs (my 1983 catalog
verifies this, and also shows that the company was still located
in Seattle (110 Prefontaine Place South, Seattle, 98104).

....
The Omnipotent was a non-Goretex,
extreme-weather tent designed by Mr. Nicolai. It was a hoop style
tent with four supporting poles, and also featured a double-wall
design wherein the outer shell of the tent was its strength and
waterproofing, and the inner tent was permanently attached to
the outer and more or less suspended from the outer shell--- in
some ways similar to what Warmlite tents had been doing for many
years. The Omnipotent arose reputedly after the failure of Mr.
Nicolai's traditional A-frame tent circa 1970 nearly led to his
death on Early Winters Spire in the North Cascades of Washington
State...He was a poor young man then, but his innovative direct
marketing through catalogs grew his small company quickly.. By
1976, he introduced The Light Dimension, a single-wall Goretex
design that some claim was a FIRST in the industry. Tent Image
credit: Alan Wenker.

If claims are true, then Early Winters
company would merit a HISTORY OF GEAR AWARD, and that would be:
DOUBLE FIRSTS-- FIRST TO USE GORETEX IN A GARMENT, and FIRST TO
USE GORETEX IN A TENT, both in 1976.

A bit later, in 1978, EW introduced a 3-4
man Goretex geodesic dome designed by tent designer Bob Howe (see link). It was named the "Earth
Station." It was likely the first true geodesic dome tent
to use a single-wall Goretex shell.

Early Winters as its original innovative
self was gone by about 1983, when it had discontinued its very
successful line of tents and other "serious" mountain
gear..... My guess is that the persistence of the Early Winters
label into relatively recent times reflects the fact that it was
a successful label and its later corporate owners desired to maintain
its draw. . I would highly appreciate READER INPUT ABOUT Early
Winters. ...CONTACT
ME.... Wikipedia also has a biography of sorts about Mr. Nicolai.
Here is the
link to that.... in part, the biography states that after
Mr. Nicolai sold Early Winters he went on to other pursuits, primarily
in the area of being a consultant about direct marketing catalog
sales. It states that as of 2007 he was still alive and was still
in the area of business consulting.... It adds information about
the person of Mr. N., stating that he was a long-term sailplane
pilot, and also a person who did quite a few climbing and skiing
exploits, thus that he was a person authentically grounded in
moutain pursuits on a personal level.... Other research I have
done reveal that Mr. Nicolai possesses a graduate degree in Business
from Harvard, so this man has what so many of the pioneers of
gear lacked, which was highly trained business skills. Without
such skills to guide them through changing times, many of the
great classic companies were destroyed--- beset with new challenges
like competition from China.... Dec. 2010, a recent reader contribution
places Mr. Nicolai as a senior staff at Lenser.com;
this company also has a biography posted in their "Staff"
pages.

The "Early Winters" name was apparently
bought and is now owned, and maybe used, by Norm Thompson.

Remarkably different has been the business
course of the small custom gearmaker Stephenson's
Warmlite, which has survived, and never changed its name or
ownership in some 40 years of doing business! Be sure to examine
the Warmlite tents, which possess a basic design/structure remarkably
like the Light Dimension and Omnipotent, but had already been
on the market over ten years when the EW line was introduced.